Companies Pay Out Big Bucks to Lease Land for Drilling

MIA Gold Rush

Kansas landman Fred Hambright works at his desk in Wichita. Two years ago, the U.S. imported about two-thirds of its oil. According to the Energy Information Administration, these days it imports less than half. Thanks to new technologies, from North Dakota to Kansas, Americans are finding more untapped gas and oil.

Jake Whitman/ABC News

MIA Gold Rush

Kansas landman Fred Hambright works at his desk in Wichita. Two years ago, the U.S. imported about two-thirds of its oil. According to the Energy Information Administration, these days it imports less than half. Thanks to new technologies, from North Dakota to Kansas, Americans are finding more untapped gas and oil.

Jake Whitman/ABC News

MIA Gold Rush

Farmers Allen and Debbie Francis show ABC News' Sharyn Alfonsi the $174,000 tractor they purchased with their oil lease money. They have become overnight millionaires as oil companies have started to pay thousands of dollars for the right to drill on land.

Jake Whitman/ABC News

MIA Gold Rush

Susan Croft of Anthony, Kan., stands in front of the oil well being drilled on part of her 3,000 acres of farmland. Leasing agreements for the land have already made Croft a millionaire. From Pennsylvania to Texas, horizontal drilling and hydraulic facturing are turning the U.S. into an oil superpower.

Jake Whitman/ABC News

MIA Gold Rush

Tractor dealer Pat Myers has sold eight to 10 more John Deere tractors since the oil boom came to Anthony, Kan. This model costs $225,00 and many customers are paying cash. "Many of the farmers I deal with every day are customers that we've dealt with for 20 years," he told ABC News. "Some of them have wanted to have new tractors for a long time."

Jake Whitman/ABC News

MIA Gold Rush

On Main Street in Anthony, Kan., the small town is beginning to show signs of the boom. Hotel parking lots are packed each night with the muddy trucks of the drillers and rent for
one-bedroom apartments has skyrocketed -- from a few hundred dollars to $1,500 per month.

Jake Whitman/ABC News

MIA Gold Rush

Mother of three Linda Trujillo, an oil field worker in Liberal, Kan., left her job in the fast food industry in New Mexico to make better wages in the oil fields of Kansas.

Jake Whitman/ABC News

MIA Gold Rush

Landman Kenny Hoop reads through records in Pratt, Kan., as he searches for the ownership rights to land he's hoping to lease. Handwritten records scribbled down in land books are still the only way to track down ownership of mineral rights to the thousands of acres of farmland mostly covered by wheat fields.

Jake Whitman/ABC News

MIA Gold Rush

An oil well outside Wichita, Kan. The state's Mississippi Lime formation is the latest ground zero in a gold-rush-style oil boom sweeping the U.S. New technology is turning lands once thought to be sucked dry of oil and gas into vast, untapped reserves that could produce for more than 100 years.

Jake Whitman/ABC News

MIA Gold Rush

Leah Kasten walks with Shayrn Alfonsi on a well being drilled on the Kansas-Oklahoma border.